June 10, 2026
YC founders: shoot your launch video before Demo Day
Demo Day gives you one shot at attention. A launch video made before the rush means you meet it with something worth sharing.
Every batch, the same thing happens. Demo Day lands, a few hundred startups get a spike of attention at the same moment, and most of them meet it with a landing page and a tweet. The founders who came prepared with a sharp ninety-second video get shared, quoted, and remembered. The rest get skimmed.
The mistake is treating the video as a launch-day task. By the time Demo Day is two weeks out you are rehearsing your pitch, talking to investors, and fixing whatever broke that morning. There is no space left to plan a shoot. The founders who end up with a great video booked it six to eight weeks early, when the story was already clear but the calendar was still sane.
What a pre-Demo Day video needs to do
It has one job: make someone who has never heard of you understand what you do and why it matters, in under two minutes, without you in the room. That means a founder on camera who sounds like a person, a product shown doing the thing, and a cut that respects the viewer's time. It does not need drone shots or a cinematic color grade. It needs clarity and pace.
Shoot it before the crunch, and the same footage keeps working after the spike: investor updates, your careers page, the first sales conversations. One shoot, months of use. That is the whole trade.
Got something big coming?
Tell us what the video needs to do. If we're a fit, you'll have a plan and a number within 48 hours.